The invention relates to a method, a device and a computer program product for producing a graphic user and/or display surface on a display for a man/machine interface of a motor vehicle.
The man/machine interface (MMI) of a motor vehicle is of principal importance to the driver. The increasing number of vehicle functions, their increasing complexity, for example, as a result of telematics services, and the increasing number of vehicle series and equipment variations make particularly high demands on the development of man/machine interfaces. The increasingly complex user concepts, which permit, for example, a mixture of manual and linguistic operations, or a change or adaptation of the man/machine interfaces to the respective vehicle user and/or to the respective driving or traffic situation, further increase the demands on the development of man/machine interfaces.
If the conventional development measures are retained, expenditures of time will rise to a degree that is no longer acceptable.
There is therefore needed an improved method for producing a graphic user and/or display surface on a display for a man/machine interface of a motor vehicle, the user surface having graphic elements which are arranged in a menu-type manner.
This need is met by providing a method according to the invention for producing a graphic user and/or display surface on a display for a man/machine interface of a motor vehicle. The user surface has graphic elements arranged in the form of a menu. In order to be able to change the user and/or display surface at expenditures which are as low as possible, particularly within the scope of the development of a suitable interface, a main group and at least one subgroup below the main group or below a subgroup ranked below the main group is formed. Each of the graphic elements is assigned to the main group or to one of the subgroups. The main group and the at least one subgroup each indicate properties of the graphic elements assigned to it, a graphic element of a subgroup, in addition to the properties indicated in the subgroup, also having at least predominantly the properties indicated in the main group.
As a result of the formation of main and subgroups, defined group properties may be assigned to all graphic elements of the respective group. If one or more of the properties of the concerned group are changed, the corresponding properties of all graphic elements of the concerned group will change. This takes place by a single change of the corresponding properties within the scope of the group properties; a change in the case of each element is no longer necessary. The elements of the corresponding group therefore “inherit” properties. This concept of the invention is based on the recognition that a group of graphic elements, with the exception of one or two properties, often has the same properties with respect to its graphic design. Thus, the graphic elements of one and the same group may differ, for example, only by their label.
As an alternative or in addition, it is provided in an embodiment of the invention that at least one property of the properties indicated in the main group is indicated in a subgroup in a manner deviating from the main group. According to the invention, a graphic element which is assigned to the corresponding subgroup will then not have the property defined in the main group, but rather a property deviating therefrom. It may, for example, be defined in the main group that all graphic elements which are part of the main group have a “blue” background color. Deviating therefrom, it may be defined, for example, in the case of one subgroup below the main group, that the background color of the graphic elements also assigned to this subgroup is “gray”. The subgroup may, for example, be one of the menus of the man/machine interface (MMI), such as the entertainment menu, the navigation menu, the air-conditioning menu, or another menu of the MMI. A graphic element assigned to the subgroup will then have the properties defined in the main group with the exception of the property indicated in a deviating manner in the subgroup.
This inventive concept of “flexibly inheriting” or flexibly passing on properties of the graphic elements across hierarchically structured groups can naturally also advantageously be used across hierarchically structured subgroups and not just across a main group to one or more subgroups below the main group.
The concept of flexibly inheriting according to the invention has the advantage of being able to pass on a plurality of properties at low expenditures, while this is not rigidly applicable to all properties. “Exceptions from the rule” can thereby be taken into account at low expenditures. Furthermore, it is achieved by means of the concept according to the invention that changes of the properties can be implemented at low expenditures in that the property is newly defined once in the main group or in the subgroup. This leads to a change of the corresponding property of each graphic element which is assigned to the concerned main group or to the concerned subgroup. A high-expenditure change of the characteristic in the binary description or in the data of each graphic element is therefore not required.
As an alternative or in addition, it is provided in a further development of the invention that at least one of the following properties of the graphic element is indicated in the main group:
size of the element, particularly the height, width, radius or type size of the label of the element or a combination thereof;
bit maps which the element uses, particularly the background and foreground, each focused, selected, deactivated, or a combination thereof, arrows for the scrolling, focus indications;
distances, particularly of individual bit maps with respect to one another, of individual bit maps relative to the origin, of individual texts relative to the origin, or a combination thereof;
special element properties, particularly the contracting capacity of the element when not focusing, whether the element can be selected, “pressed” or focused, the scaling of bit maps, offsets of scrolling parameters of the element;
texts, particularly the text alignment, that is, whether they are right-aligned, left-aligned or centered, or the font, and/or
colors, particularly the background color, the focus color, the text color, the selection color, the focusing color or the deactivating color.
As an alternative or in addition, it is provided in a further development of the invention that the graphic elements are formed on the basis of binary data elements describing them. Each binary data element is provided with an assignment indication as to which main group or subgroup the graphic element is assigned.
As an alternative or in addition, it is provided in a further development of the invention that the graphic elements are described by XML, that is, extensible markup language.
As an alternative or in addition, it is provided in a further development of the invention that the assignment of the binary data element takes place by indicating a domain as the main group and by indicating a subdomain as the subgroup, respectively.
As an alternative or in addition, it is provided in a further development of the invention that the graphic elements are displayed by using an XML-data-processing browser.
These measures advantageously permit a use of the “flexible passing-on” according to the invention of properties in the “XML technology” which is known per se and mastered. XML data can be shown, among others, also by browsers, such as the known Internet browsers. As a result, menus or MMIs can be generated in a fairly simple manner, which provide the driver with a “look and feel” which he knows from surfing the Internet by use of an Internet browser. In the case of an MMI designed in such a fashion, the driver very rapidly feels “at home” and is familiar with the MMI or with the menus.
As an alternative or in addition, it is provided in a further development of the invention that the graphic elements are described by binary data elements in an object-oriented programming language, such as, in particular, Java or C++.
It hereby becomes possible to use the concept of “inheriting properties” or the concept of “flexibly inheriting properties” according to the invention when successfully using the above-mentioned known and mastered object-oriented programming languages.
Other objects, advantages and novel features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of the invention when considered in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.